Intellectuals and the Decline of Religion: Essays and Reviews

These authors range from John Henry Newman in the nineteenth century to Joseph Needham, who died in 1995, and include G. K. Chesterton, Arnold Toynbee, R. H. Tawney, Malcolm Muggeridge, T. S. Eliot and C. S Lewis. Their reactions vary from mild complacency to prophesy of the death of civilisation, with some glimmering hopes for a revival of spirituality and faith. Many spoke of their mystical experiences, of feeling a sense of the transcendental. They wrote in a time of horrific warfare, violence, ideological conflict and rapidly changing popular culture. Our age of Twitter and a clash of civilisations has much to learn from these acute and refreshingly readable thinkers.